OBS Studio vs Owncast Comparison 2026
Both cover live streaming. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
At a glance
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
OBS Studio | Owncast | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Pricing model | Free | Free |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | One-time purchase | Not stated |
| Free trial | None | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | None |
| Runs on | macOS, Windows, Linux | macOS, Windows, Linux |
| Covers |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
OBS Studio
Free and open source streaming and recording
OBS is what most of the streams you watch are running, and it costs nothing because it is a volunteer project rather than a business with a free tier. Scenes, sources, filters and a real audio mixer are all there, along with plugin support. Nothing about it is friendly on the first evening, and the settings that decide whether your stream looks good are the ones with no explanation next to them.
Our note
Every paid streaming tool in this catalog is, in part, selling you an escape from OBS's settings panel. That is a real thing to buy if your time is worth more than the evening. If it is not, OBS does everything they do and costs nothing.
Only on this side
- Covers screen recording
- Works with YouTube
- Works with Facebook
- Works with Twitch
- Works with Kick
Owncast
Your own live streaming server, free
Owncast is a self-hosted live video server with chat built in, so a streamer can broadcast to their own site instead of to somebody else's platform. Any encoder that speaks RTMP points at it, which means the software already on a streaming desktop works unchanged. There is no account, no cut and nobody able to demonetise you. What replaces those things is a server bill and the job of keeping it alive.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.